Will the big-screen “Veronica Mars” leave its devoted Marshmallows hungry for s’more? It’s a pretty good bet considering how delicious a confection series creator Rob Thomas cooks up for the 91,000 fans who anted up $5.7 million of their own money to make it happen.

It’s been seven years since the acclaimed, ratings-challenged show got the ax from the CW, but the film feels so fresh and new, it’s like it never went away. The only thing that’s changed is that the actors – which for the most part played teenagers during the series’ 3-year run on TV – are now more mature and road weary twenty-somethings. Which works to everyone’s benefit, as the film vividly taps that pivotal moment in everyone’s life – their 10-year high school reunion. It’s a time for the nerds, like Veronica, to have their day, as they indubitably are smarter and richer than their former aggressors – the jocks and cheerleaders. So it is with Neptune High’s class of 2004, and that of course includes Veronica (the sensational Kristen Bell) and her two partners in fighting crime, Mac (Tina Majorino) and Wallace (Percy Daggs III).

All three are doing extremely well, especially Veronica, who’s fresh out of law school and shacking up with her too-good-to-be-true boyfriend, Piz (Chris Lowell), in the Big Apple. She even has a job offer from a prestigious Manhattan law firm. But all is tossed into limbo once she gets word that former flame Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring) has been charged with electrocuting his pop-star girlfriend back home in fictional Neptune, home to So. Cal’s rich and famous.

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Veronica, who’s addicted to mysteries like a junkie on heroin, can’t resist devoting all her well-honed private eye skills to clear Logan’s name, even if it means sacrificing everything she’s worked for socially and professionally. And what timing! It turns out her return home coincides with the reunion at Neptune High, where Veronica burned so many bridges via her teen sleuthing that she became – and remains – the pariah of the class of 2004. And she hasn’t even gotten started yet. Just wait until her ensuing investigation starts to implicate former classmates like Gia (Krysten Ritter), Dick (Ryan Hansen) and Weevil (Francis Capra).

The procedural is at the film’s fore, and, frankly, not all that interesting. But like the TV show, the rewards lurk outside the center, mainly in Veronica discovering her true identity, and more importantly her true love: Piz, the solid, trustworthy good guy; or Logan, the trouble-making bad boy with the wandering eye. Both are formidable, but it’s always clear no man will ever measure up to her doting dad (a terrific Enrico Colantoni, stealing every scene he’s in), who adores his mischievous daughter even though her adolescent antics cost him his job and the town’s respect a decade ago.

Page 2 of 2 - The Marshmallows, as Veronica’s fans refer to themselves, will no doubt savor all 108 minutes of it. As they should since the record amount of cash they contributed on Kickstarter last year provided the seed money to get the long-gestating film made. But the true test is how the movie will play for people who’ve never heard of Veronica Mars, or never watched the show during its run from 2004 to 2007. That group would include me, and I can attest that Thomas and his co-writer, Diane Ruggiero, have conjured a movie that stands on its own and is accessible to everyone, no matter if you’re a Marshmallow or not. And to add to the fun, Thomas unleashes a host of cameos, ranging from Bell’s husband, Dax Shepard, to the ubiquitous James Franco. They’re frivolous and add nothing to the story, but they represent the movie’s eagerness to please. And pleasing, it most definitely is.